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Last summer, when Stephanie Herseth (D-SD) won a special election in South Dakota, Republican Tom Davis (R-VA-11), former Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, downplayed the Republican defeat by whining, “If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won."

Oh, Tom. Those pesky minorities, voting Democratic again. If only you could take them out of those districts you need to win - it would be so much easier for Republicans to gain power and stay in power!

Of course, if you can't "take out" minorities, your next best defense if you're a Republican is keeping them from coming into your district in the first place, and an article in today's Washington Post shows us that Davis is actively engaged in preventing more "urban kind of people" from moving into his own district:

The Republican congressman from Fairfax seems to believe that
the only way he can guarantee himself reelection till the end of time
is to prevent Democrats from moving into his district.

Davis
last week announced his intent to use Congress's authority over the
Metro system to force a downsizing of a huge, 2,250-unit condo,
townhouse and commercial development planned for 56 acres next to the
Vienna Metro station. [...]

One politician who spoke to Davis says the congressman told
him straight-out that he opposes Pulte Homes' MetroWest project because
"all it does is produce Democrats."

Davis won
reelection last year with a solid 60 percent of the vote against a
largely unknown opponent, but he saw frightening cracks in his
electoral foundation. "He lost Merrifield, the area around the Dunn
Loring Metro station, and he's convinced that it turned blue because of
development around the station," says Democrat Gerry Connolly, the
Fairfax board chairman. [...]

Davis's alternative to density at such suburban Metro stations
as Vienna is not more sprawl, but rather a push to repopulate the
District. "Culturally, the people who would move into this project in
Vienna are urban kind of people. A lot of them are single, and they
would be happy living closer in."

Which would put those people where they belong, either in Democratic Washington or in suburbs in Rep. Jim Moran's Democratic district."